Residz Team 3 min read
Forget your newly tiled kitchen and painted feature wall. Your neighbourhood and lifestyle are the features most likely to attract house buyers in 2022. A recent U.S. survey found 87% of house buyers look for a location that aligns with their lifestyle. I’m sure you’d agree Australians are the same. For a start, the survey showed top dream home locations split among:
It sounds very familiar doesn’t it? We know lifestylers are causing rental shortages, and a flee to the regions changed the property market structure. But let’s overlay Australia’s experiences to see how our dreams match up with our U.S. counterparts, and then see how you can use the info to sell your own place.
Aussies do like their t-shirts, shorts, and thongs. Queensland is Australia’s fastest growing state, attracting vast numbers of buyers and renters from the former frontrunner states Melbourne and Sydney. While “bang for your buck” is a big factor, the year round warm to hot temperatures and average water temperature of 26 degrees celsius has great appeal to house hunting sunseekers. The country’s fastest growing city was the “booming or bargain” Brisbane until the recent tragic floods. News reports suggest recent competitiveness in that market may ease off for a few years but is expected to bounce back. Properties in popular areas for interstate investors and across more than 100 suburbs were subject to flooding or flood warnings.
The U.S. survey showed suburbia is popular with Americans and it's always held top spot in the Aussie property dream too. A patch of grass doesn’t sound like much, but it became even more desirable during the pandemic lockdowns. Canstar’s Rising Stars Australian Property Market Report predicts areas likely to grow in value in 2022 includes mostly those offering suburban lifestyles:
You can also see the need for space reflected in the unit-house median price gap. CoreLogic research showed the median price for houses in capital cities increased by 14.2 per cent over much of 2020-21 compared with around a 6 per cent rise for apartments, flats, and units.
Remote work is a bit of a misnomer sitting in a home office 15 minutes from your workplace. But plenty of buyers and renters are taking remote work at face value to move well away from the rat race. The number of searches in Google for the term “rural lifestyle” is up 40% on a year ago.
As well, the unwritten “100 km from a capital city” rule for buying real estate has doubled to 200 km, says Ethos Urban demographer Chris McNeil in an interview with Nine News. His list of good value buys includes North Eastern Victoria, North Central Victoria, Inner Central West NSW, East Darling Downs in Queensland, Snowy Mountains NSW, Launceston and the Tamar Valley in Tasmania, and the Barossa, Avon, Hunter, and Upper Goulburn Valley regions of SA, WA, NSW, and Vic respectively.
"Most of these regions are inland from their respective capital city. After all, most coastal towns and regions have been well and truly picked over already," Mr McNeill told Nine News.
So what does all this mean for selling your own house? Our recommendation would be to highlight the lifestyle features of your neighbourhood alongside those of your home.
The U.S.survey by Coldwell Banker Real Estate also showed that 44% of homeowners would sell and move interstate in the future, with 94% stating “quality of life” was the main deciding factor for any move. This says to us that making “quality of life” your key selling message will get you more buyer attention. Good luck with your real estate journey!
Image: Typical suburban backyard garden in the U.S. by Veracious Rey at en.wikipedia